“I hope so. I hope it’s not another patient.” Immediately I realized I shouldn’t have suggested it. “I’ll go see.”
It was Mama, unquestionably. She jumped out of the flier she had arrived in, and made for the house with a speed I wouldn’t have thought possible over the snow. She strode past me without acknowledging my existence in any way, tall for a Nilter and broad, as they all were, bundled in coats, the signs of her relationship to the girl inside clear in the lines of her face. I followed her in.
On seeing the girl, now standing by the abandoned Tiktik board, she said, “Well, then, what?”
A Radchaai parent would have put her arms around her daughter, kissed her, told her how relieved she was her daughter was well, maybe even would have wept. Some Radchaai would have thought this parent cold and affectionless. But I was sure that would have been a mistake. They sat down together on a bench, sides touching, as the girl gave her report, what she knew of the patient’s condition, and what had happened out in the snow with the herd, and the ice devil. When she had finished, her mother patted her twice on the knee, briskly, and it was as though she were suddenly a different girl, taller, stronger, now she had, it seemed, not only her mother’s strong, comforting presence, but her approval.
I brought them two cups of fermented milk, and Mama’s attention snapped to me, but not, I thought, because I was of any interest in particular. “You’re not the doctor,” she said, bare statement. I could see her attention was still on her daughter; her interest in me stretched only as far as I might be a threat or a help.
“I’m a guest here,” I told her. “But the doctor is busy, and I thought you might like something to drink.”
Her eyes went to Seivarden, still sleeping, as she had for the last several hours, that black, trembling corrective spread across her forehead, the remains of bruising around her mouth and nose.
“She’s from very far away,” said the girl. “She didn’t know how to play Tiktik!” Her mother’s gaze flicked over the set on the floor, the dice, the board and flat, painted stone pieces halted in midcourse. She said nothing, but her expression changed, just slightly. She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, and took the milk I offered.
Twenty minutes later Seivarden woke, brushed the black corrective off her head, and wiped fretfully at her upper lip, pausing at the flakes of dried blood that rubbed away. She looked at the two Nilters, sitting silent, side by side, on a nearby bench, studiously ignoring both her and me. Neither of them seemed to find it odd that I didn’t go to Seivarden’s side, or say anything to her. I didn’t know if she remembered why I had hit her, or even that I had. Sometimes a blow to the head affects memories of the moments leading up to it. But she must have either remembered or suspected something, because she didn’t look at me at all. After fidgeting a few minutes she rose and went to the kitchen and opened a cabinet. She stared for thirty seconds, and then got a bowl, and hard bread to put in it, and water to pour over it, and then stood, staring, waiting for it to soften, saying nothing, looking at no one.
8
At first the people I had sent away from the Fore-Temple water stood whispering in small groups on the street, and then dispersed when I approached, walking my regular rounds. But soon after, everyone disappeared into their houses, clustered together within. For the next few hours the upper city was quiet. Eerily so, and it didn’t help that Lieutenant Awn continually asked me what was happening there.
Lieutenant Awn was sure increasing my presence in the upper city would only make the situation worse, so instead she ordered me to stay close to the plaza. If anything happened I would be there, between the upper and lower city. It was largely because of this that when things went to pieces, I was still able to function more or less effectively.
For hours nothing happened. The Lord of the Radch mouthed prayers along with the priests of Ikkt. In the lower city I passed the word that it might be a good idea to stay in tonight, and as a result there were no conversations in the streets, no knots of neighbors congregating on someone’s ground floor to watch an entertainment. By dark nearly everyone had retired to an upper floor, and was talking quietly, or looking out over the railings, saying nothing.